Through the Looking Glass

A chronicle of the absurd, in politics and life

Friday, April 05, 2002

Francis Fukuyama first made a splash in the early '90s with his
provocatively titled book, "The End of History and the Last Man." The
thesis, in effect, was this: scientifically based Western culture had
found the most efficient, most comfortable, best possible way to
organize a society, that it looked pretty much like the United States
of the day, or more precisely, the United States on the coasts
(lightly regulated markets, basically secular government), and that
because we had reached a truly optimal point, that "history",
considered as the story of the evolution of human society was
basically over, because nothing was ever going to change again, as all
is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

There is, of course, a basic contradiction here: the basis of
science itself is continuous challenge to scientific ideas. A
scientific theory is never considered to be finally confirmed; even
the most firmly established ideas are open to challenge; Newton's laws
of motion were amended on the large scale by Einstein, and on the
small by Bohr, Planck, and, well, Einstein. So, in declaring that
the much softer sciences of sociology and economics had reached their
final point, Fukuyama was, in effect, embracing the conclusions of the
scientific process while rejecting their basis.

Well, the
contradiction is out; Fukuyama is now arguing against future
development of biotechnology, on grounds that they might justify new
forms of social order (a quaint notion that used to be called
"progress"). Perhaps he's worried that if things keep changing, he'll
have to find a new title for his damn book.

The New York Times today reviews
the Star Wars exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, showing costumes,
models, and other junk from the sets of the movies, along with copious
amounts of merchandise, some of which is there to illustrate the Star
Wars "mythology" (the catalog strains under the weight of its
allusions to Campbell and Jung), and some of which is there to
illustrate what's really driving the showing of exhibit, down the hall
in the gift shop. It sounds like a real trip, though not necessarily
for the stuff on display:

... museum officials alerted me to a Web site (http://boards.theforce.net/message.asp?topic=6077494&replies=0)
where guidelines for appropriate behavior have been posted for members
of the New York chapter of one of the "Stars Wars" fan clubs. The
guidelines specify "NO DUELING of any kind!" and "NO Blasters! NO
BLASTERS!"

I'm actually serious about that: the most interesting thing about
the "Star Wars" phenomenon by far is the way people are using these
lousy movies as a basis for genuine folk art. And I do think the
movies are lousy --- the first was an apparently self-conscious riff
on the short serials produced in the '40s on the cheap, but given the
sheer ponderous pretension of what followed, Lucas either forgot
about that, or wasn't smart enough to get his own joke in the first
place. But I'm not the guy running around in the home-made cape with
the painted paper-towel roll subbing in for a light saber, and I don't
understand what makes him tick --- which makes him a lot more interesting than
the movie makers, whose millions of
motives are obvious.

More news from Boston: Teachers are getting beaten up in the schools,
and some are winding up in the hospital.
Why can't they appeal to the parents to help get control of the
situation? Because the batterers are
the parents.

But a few things about the quest are puzzling. Like the choice of
plaintiffs. Says Ogletree, "Brown University, Yale University and
Harvard Law School have made headlines recently as the beneficiaries
of grants and endowments traced back to slavery and are probable
targets." Brown, in fact, was originally endowed by a family which
(like quite a few New England grandees of the time) made their money
on the slave trade. But the University that bears their name is not
accused of slave trading itself, just of taking their money. If it
can be sued, how about all the other recipients of their tainted cash?
Their descendants? Their shipbuilders? The descendants of the
shipbuilders? (If the ships were purpose built, it's at least as
strong a case).

And then there's the question of where the cash will go. Says Ogletree:

The reparations movement should not, I believe, focus on
payments to individuals. The damage has been done to a group -
African-American slaves and their descendants - but it has not been
done equally within the group. The reparations movement must aim at
undoing the damage where that damage has been most severe and where
the history of race in America has left its most telling evidence. The
legacy of slavery and racial discrimination in America is seen in
well-documented racial disparities in access to education, health
care, housing, insurance, employment and other social goods. The
reparations movement must therefore focus on the poorest of the poor -
it must finance social recovery for the bottom-stuck, providing an
opportunity to address comprehensively the problems of those who have
not substantially benefited from integration or affirmative
action.

But the government, which Ogletree plans to include
as a plaintiff, and which has more money than the rest of
them put together,
already is disbursing funds targeted at
that class of individuals --- welfare programs among others. So, in
effect, Ogletree isn't proposing so much to rectify specific damages
to specific individuals (well-off blacks, he says, don't need to get
much), as to take an entire class of social programs out of the hands
of Congress, and give them to the courts. Would the courts also get
taxing authority to raise funds for the government programs they would
create as part of the reparations process? (And by the way, do funds
already disbursed through those programs count against reparation
damages?)

Lastly, there's the question of motive. You'd think a lawsuit
would be narrowly aimed at discovering the appropriate damages for a
specific tort. But Ogletree casts a wider net:

Bringing the government into litigation will also generate
a public debate on slavery and the role its legacy continues to play
in our society. The opportunity to use expert witnesses and conduct
extensive discovery, to get facts and documentation, makes the
courtroom an ideal venue for this debate.

A full and deep conversation on slavery and its legacy has never
taken place in America; reparations litigation will show what slavery
meant, how it was profitable and how it has continued to affect the
opportunities of millions of black Americans.

Litigation is required to promote this discussion because political
accountability has not been forthcoming. ...

So Ogletree thinks that just about the entire experience of blacks
in America is grist for assessing the damages. I guess he wants to be
the first academic ever granted the power of subpoena to further his
social research.

Civil courts do not exist to "generate public debate". They exist
to adjudiciate disputes on narrowly considered factual situations,
according to relevant law. In fact, they have rules of evidence which
are designed to exclude facts which are not directly relevant to the
legal issues at hand. This is not a process which lends itself to
"full and deep conversation". The land claims of the Sioux, the
damages done to interned Japanese during World War II, the
discriminatory loan policies of the Agriculture department ---
precedents which Ogletree cites (well, not the Sioux, but he should
have) --- were all cases designed at redress of grievances for
specific government acts, not everything that has ever happened to
Indians, Japanese, or Blacks in America. "A full and deep
conversation on slavery and its legacy" might be a good thing, but a
civil court is not the right venue.

This seems to be an outbreak of one of the nastier infectious memes
that infests the United States: "If you don't like what you're getting
out of life --- your house, your job, the tenor of public debate on your
pet issue --- find someone to sue." But this is a new strain. Fortunately,
it doesn't seem virulent. At least not yet.

On May 18th of last year, Bush signed two executive orders
regulating energy policy. One, on accelerating the permitting process
for energy related projects, was cribbed directly (word-for-word, in
places) from a proposal drafted by the American Gas Association, an
energy lobbying group. The other, on energy supply and distribution
regulations, "closely tracked" a request from the American Petroleum
Institute. The Gas Association was particularly pleased, since they
had originally drafted their proposal as suggestions for a bill to be
given to the Senate. Public debate is so tedious and slow.

(The original drafts of these orders, on lobbyist letterhead,
were among the papers of Cheney's energy task force that
the White House was trying to conceal. Strictly on principle, of course).

So, it wasn't just Enron. While Enron did get favors --- like
choosing both the White House policy on access to local power grids
and the FERC regulators who would implement those policies
--- they weren't special favors. The White House would roll
over for anybody.

Tuesday, April 02, 2002

You can't get good pop music on the air these days because of centralized
conglomerates with monolithic playlists, chosen by payola. So why
can't you hear good classical music? Stephen Budiansky asked
his local classical stations why vocal music and keyboard works had
vanished from their playlists (except perhaps when arranged for
guitar), in favor of tranquil mush by knighted victorians.

The managers of both stations were remarkably
forthright when I posed that question to them. Their answer, simply,
was that they were not really playing classical pieces at all. They
were providing a "sound."

"We don't know for sure how sophisticated our listeners are," Dan
DeVany, the general manager of WETA, told me. "But we do know enormous
amounts about how our radio station is used?we have tremendous amounts
of data on that. And radio is used predominantly as background
listening. That's an important fact, because distinguishing that
experience from the concert-hall experience informs us as to what kind
of music to play."

While insisting that there is no "rigid code" at WETA on what not
to play, DeVany acknowledged that he was influenced by the general
results of industry surveys in which listeners were played various
snippets of music and asked to rate how "positive" or "negative" an
"experience" each was. Vocal music was consistently a big negative. So
was most chamber music. DeVany believes that's because chamber music
"is an extremely intense musical experience." He explained, "In some
cases, when you're doing other things, it demands attention, and that
may become an irritant?just by the nature of the instrumentation."

The public, in short, wants to use a classical station as a kind of
electronic Valium, and the radio stations are giving them what they
want. You might expect public radio stations like WETA to be
relatively immune from this sort of pressure, but as Congress demands
they get more of their funding through corporate sponsorship, they are
increasingly forced into the same mold as the commercial stations,
doing what it takes to get ratings --- a fact which their doctrinaire
critics then use to argue for further cuts in government funding.
(Neat, huh?)

The consequence of this in the limited and regulated radio spectrum
is a kind of Gresham's law of content, where the bad music drives out
the good. (Among other things; to be fair, you also hear fewer
twentieth-century twelve-tone concertos for chalk squeak and rusty
fence, which aren't as obvious a loss). Part of the cure, then, might
be in some form of measured deregulation --- like the low-power
microbroadcasting which the FCC was going to authorize and then withdrew
under pressure from major broadcasters --- including, to its
lasting discredit, NPR.

But it remains the case that for a time, government funding was
helping to keep high-quality oddball stuff, like classical vocal
pieces, on the air --- and to that extent, at least, it was playing a
useful role.

A few right-wing bloggers have had peculiar reactions to a piece
of mine last week which mentioned, among other things, the
Kerkorians' ludicrous palimony fight, and remarks by that
bomb-throwing radical, Michael Bloomberg (Mayor of New York, from 9:00
AM to 5:00 PM, Monday
through Friday) to the effect that you can't put an incinerator
near the rich folks because it would ruin the tax base, which
prompted, among other things, this rant
from Ben Kepple:

Mr Dodgson is also displeased that Mayor Michael Bloomberg
in New York wants incinerators in impoverished areas of the City
. Hizzoner points out these things have a tendency to go there. The
whole shebang, Mr Dodgson argues, "is a gut check on the glories of
American egalitarianism."

Why this is, I can't see it. So the rich have more than the poor
do; this takes nothing away from the fact that even now in American
life, a poor man can still become rich through hard work and living a
virtuous life. Mr Kerkorian did not suddenly inherit his wealth; and
even though his children will likely inherit some or all of it, it
takes nothing away from the fact that money was earned, no matter who
has it or where it comes from. One can start out poor in this life, be
poor as he leaves high school or college, or lose his money and become
poor. Whichever category a man falls into, nobody is going to get him
out of it until he himself makes the effort to do so.

Someone who hadn't read the original piece might well conclude from
that that I was quoting the Workers' Vanguard instead of the New York
Post, but despite the bilious tone, Kepple isn't disagreeing with
anything I actually said. (Well, he is disagreeing with one thing;
Kira Kerkkorian isn't Kirk Kerkorian's child, as even her
mother now admits, though she's still suing for child support; she has
even fessed up to faking the paternity test. And I'm also a bit
curious whether he really thinks that Kirk Kerkorian, a Las Vegas
casino mogul with, to say the least, tangled personal affairs, is
really the best poster boy for the rewards of the virtuous life. But
I digress).

When I call these examples of "the kind of thing I like to use as a
gut check when I hear people getting too sanctimonious about the
egalitarian glory of America" (as I wrote it less sloppily in an
earlier post), what I mean is simply this: that when one hears claims,
as one does, from time to time, that no one has special privileges in
America, it's useful to remember that some Americans actually do ---
like the privilege of breathing clean air. As Kepple freely admits.

Sunday, March 31, 2002

I haven't had a whole lot to say about the current situation in Israel
because, well, what can you say? But a few comments from the
Palestinian side in this
Times piece cry out for comment. First,

Palestinian officials say that Mr. Arafat cannot act
against violence when besieged, or when he would seem to be
functioning purely as Mr. Sharon's sheriff.

That second condition is a doozy. The premise of the Peace
process, such as it is, is that Arafat can and will deliver the
security that the Israelis require --- which is to say, that he will
act as a sheriff. And as a condition of his existing agreements, he
has already promised (several times) to do that. If he cannot, or
will not, meet those commitments, what is the point of making another
deal?

The implicit concession that Arafat actually could do more to
restrain terrorism (he would, they say, if Israel would just adopt a
different, more supine diplomatic posture) is just as remarkable.

They also come up with a totally random slur on the Israelis, for
no other reason than that they have a Western reporter on the line:

... among numerous indignities Palestinians accused Israeli
forces of capturing a television station and using it to broadcast
pornography.

A United States consulate employee who was in Ramallah confirmed
that the programs were on the air. The Israeli Army said soldiers
interrupted the station's broadcasting but had not substituted
pornography for the usual programming.

He said Israeli forces had used bulldozers and tanks to flatten
other buildings in the compound, and he repeated Palestinian claims
that the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was out to kill
Mr. Arafat.

The article earlier noted that the Israelis had restored power and
brought food and water into the barricaded compound (whoever says
"beseiged" isn't clear on the concept), and that Arafat could hear
Hebrew-speaking guards outside his door. If they wanted to kill him,
why isn't he dead yet?

One of the sad things about this, by the way, is that Ariel Sharon
is coming off as the good guy, at least by comparison, even though he
has war crimes of his own to answer for at Sabra and Shatila, and even
though he is widely credited as the architect of the settlements
policy which involves continuing
displacement of Palestinians, and which has been, and continues to
be, an obstacle to peace; as even Tom Friedman has figured
out, if the Israelis and Palestinians can't live together, they
must live apart, and a policy of deliberately moving Jews onto land
promised to the Palestinian authorities will not permit that.

But regardless, it is clear that the Palestinians are not
negotiating in good faith, their intention is clearly hostile, and the
Israelis will have to deal with them on that basis --- more's the pity,
and the horror.

Nonsense can be fun. There's some beautiful nonsense at the Pepper Gallery, the City
of Salt by Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick, a show featuring
digital prints of strange scenes, Borgesian short-short stories posted
on the walls which purport to explain them, and in the center of the
room, the city of salt itself, modeled in salt and clay figures, which
is variously described in the texts as the city of the living, the
city of the dead, a dream, a mirage, and an illusion in the eyes of
all who perceive it, including the inhabitants. (But isn't that what
a city is?)

The text featured on the gallery's web site is from the title
piece, "City of Salt", in which the city is either a tomb built for
the potentate of a plague-stricken city, or the dream of a
plague-stricken beggar imagining that he is a king.

This is wonderful stuff. It's there through the end of April; see it if you
have the chance.